CSA Criticism Mounts

At a September 13 Congressional hearing before the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, witnesses were highly critical of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s slow response to fixing problems with its Compliance, Safety, Accountability safety scoring system: “ATA is frustrated by FMCSA’s unwillingness to acknowledge the program’s weaknesses and correct them,” stated FedEx Ground’s vice president of safety, on behalf of the American Trucking Associations. “FMCSA’s own analysis confirms that scores in certain CSA measurement categories, including the driver fitness category, do not reliably identify those carriers that are more likely to have future crashes.” The Subcommittee’s Ranking Member, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) also seemed highly irritated: “It’s been just a little over two years since—prior to CSA’s implementation—we held a hearing in this subcommittee regarding this new system, and at that time we expressed a number of concerns that still endure.”

FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro defended the program, attributing to it a 4% reduction in crashes in 2011 compared to 2010 and calling the improvements “the most dramatic improvements in violation patterns in a decade.” She nonetheless seemed to acknowledge that CSA’s BASIC scores provided little practical guidance to shippers and brokers on selecting motor carriers, but she promised that the agency is working toward such a system and would propose it in early 2013.